


O Cursed Spite, That Ever I Was Born

by Reading Redhead (readingredhead)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: comment_fic, Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:26:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingredhead/pseuds/Reading%20Redhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the Doctor thought about leaving himself there with Rose on that beach after Journey's End.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Cursed Spite, That Ever I Was Born

It was a bit strange, watching himself. Of course, time travel being what it was, this wasn’t the first time he’d encountered himself, and the Doctor was fairly certain it would not be the last, but this time it was _different_. The man who stood there looking at Rose with this strange mix of fear and joy on a face that the Doctor knew all too well (it was the one he saw every time he bothered to look in a mirror) was so like him that the unlikeness was all the more glaring, an inexplicable discomfort beyond mere awkwardness. He shrugged it off – it was his job. Time was out of joint, and it was up to him to set it right.

Still, it was a bit strange, leaving himself (but not himself) there on the beach. At least he wasn’t leaving Rose empty-handed this time. Not in the least. He was leaving her with everything she wanted and he couldn’t give her. He’d seen it in her eyes, felt it in those exuberant embraces, and every second of it had been like the too-too-deep warmth of sun on bare skin – the kind that leaves its mark behind it in burns.

In the last moments before the pair slid out of sight behind the TARDIS’s closing doors, the Doctor allowed himself to admit that maybe what he felt was jealousy. He suspected Donna would have something to say about it, if he asked her, but he knew all too well that they had little enough time left, even if she hadn’t figured it out yet. Hundreds and hundreds of years from now, after the deaths of both of these women he had loved in the only way that he could, it would be hard enough to remember day that forced him to part with them both. He didn’t need to add an argument about the virtues of attachment into the mix.

**Author's Note:**

> Both the title and one of the Doctor's thoughts are taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet:
> 
> "The time is out of joint. O cursed spite!  
> That ever I was born to set it right."


End file.
